Bucks wrestling coach charged with child porn

Thomas Porter (Courtesy of Montgomery County District Attorney's Office)

By Carolyn Davis, Inquirer Staff Writer

Posted: August 14, 2013

An assistant wrestling coach at Neshaminy High School, who also coached a youth team in multiple counties, was arrested on charges relating to viewing child pornography, authorities said Monday.

Thomas Scott Porter, 50, of Hatboro, was charged last week with possession and dissemination of child pornography, and criminal use of a communication facility, said Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman.

Besides being an assistant wrestling coach at the high school, Porter also is a youth wrestling coach, authorities said, for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Wrestling Team, which works with young people from Montgomery, Bucks, Chester and Delaware Counties.

The Philadelphia office of the U.S. Department of Hoeland Security informed the county's detective bureau in June that there was a computer located in Hatboro that "was participating in the distribution of child pornography," Ferman said in a statement.

The federal investigators based the information on a tip they received in October that that five images of child pornography had been uploaded from the email address " freestyler149@aim.com.";

That email address was found to belong to Porter.

Porter admitted to investigators that he was "freestyler149" and that he had looked at the pornography images. Detectives found more than 50 pornographic images of children on his desktop and laptop computers, Ferman said.

Porter is at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in lieu of $50,000 bail. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Aug. 16 in front of District Justice Paul N. Leo.